Cassette No. 868
AlthoughI am increasingly
letting go of the past and its objects
the way one gradually allows one's teenagers,
step by step,
to leave,
as they outgrow their home,
and must accept how one's women age
and wither,
or how one's body, piece by piece, grows too old
for the more demanding mountain hikes,
I took out tonight
– the last eveningat at my southern retreat
in Nyköping, this time –
at random,
an audio cassette
from my almost immorally large collection
of analog-anachronistic compact cassettes
– from the time when these were one's primary sound carriers,
during the 1980s and 1990s,
(until DAT recorders, MiniDiscs, CD burners
and eventually streamed audio on the internet
took over) –
which turned out to contain a recording
from Swedish Radio P2,
31 August 1992,
of the autumn season's first New Hour
with Folke Rabe.
No. 1 that evening was Arthur Honegger's
Pastorale d'Été (1920)
with the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra
conducted by Charles Dutoit,
which I have probably not listened to
since recording it
on that final day of August, 1992...
Folke continued with Karl-Erik Welin's
Lament
from Four Japanese Poems,
with the Rilke Ensemble
under Gunnar Eriksson,
and then the poignantly beautiful,
abrasive
String Quartet No. 2 – PC 132 (1970)
by the same composer,
performed by the Saulesco Quartet,
recorded in May 1971.
I have grown into step
with this wearingly beautiful music,
finding its way across the window
like a stream of summer water.
Welin's quartet
awakens an old chamber-soul within me,
out of the brutally fine-tuned despair;
apples on an oak table
and a solitary memory
that has settled comfortably
into place.
As the final item
in this edition of The New Hour
from September 1992,
Folke Rabe played an early work
by John Cage:
Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos
(1944–45),
with Joshua Pierce and Dorothy Jonas,
at the request
of the undersigned.
Folke read my letter aloud
on The New Hour:
”Prepared piano must surely be up to people's throats by now,
I imagine,
considering the abundance
of such activity that flourishes,
but there are nevertheless works in the genre
that far surpass
the more mediocre
screw-and-rubber modifications.
One such work is John Cage's
Three Dances for Two Prepared Pianos
from 1944–45,
when the lad was all of 32–33 years old.
One can picture the young American,
crew-cut and wearing a plaid flannel shirt,
leaning into the grand piano
as though he were working
with a wrench
under the hood
of an old Dodge.
This is what I love
about the American spirit:
ingenuity!”
John Cage died 12 August 1992
Folke died 25 September 2017
Poetry by Ingvar Loco Nordin
Written on 2026-06-10 at 10:17
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